Bartlett's Familiar Pynchon

[Gangadharan, Sunil]

What's a colony without its dusky natives? Where's the fun if they're
all going to die off? Just a big hunk of desert, no more maids, no
field-hands, no laborers for the construction or the mining - wait, wait
a minute there, yes it's Karl Marx, that sly old racist skipping away .
. . trying to make believe it's nothing but Cheap Labor and Overseas
Markets.... Oh, no. Colonies are much, much more. Colonies are the
outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down
and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit - Where he can just wallow
and rut and let himself go in a softness, a receptive darkness of limbs,
of hair as woolly as the hair on his own forbidden genitals. Where the
poppy, and cannabis and coca grow full and green, and not to the colors
and style of death, as do ergot and agaric, the blight and fungus native
to Europe. Christian Europe was always death, Karl, death and
repression. Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and
sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis,
nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble
thoughts.... No word ever gets back. 

- GR, 317



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of Thomas Eckhardt
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 4:33 PM
To: David Kipen
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Bartlett's Familiar Pynchon

"Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul." GR. Probably not the 
exact wording but I can't look it up right now.

Thomas